No sooner had foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop announced that Australia should take a fresh look at nuclear power than Prime Minister Tony Abbott responded that nuclear power would only be supported…

Could carbon capture and storage be the way to clean up coal power stations, such as this one in Australia’s Latrobe Valley?
Monash University/FlickrOctober 15, 2014

To have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change we’ll have to reduce the carbon emissions from our energy sectors — currently the largest human source of greenhouse gas emissions globally. And…

Australian coal needs to find some new customers.
Stephen Codrington/Wikimedia CommonsSeptember 24, 2014

China’s recent move to limit imports of the dirtiest coal from 2015 onwards is a scary prospect for Australian miners. The proposed restrictions will ban the burning of coal with high levels of ash or…

As early as 2015 China’s use of thermal coal for electricity could peak.
Bret Arnett/FlickrAugust 25, 2014

China’s use of coal for electricity could peak as early as next year, then decline until 2020 in a turnaround of “global importance”, according to economist Ross Garnaut in a lecture presented at the Melbourne…

The Saraji coal mine in the Bowen coal basin produces around 5 million tonnes of coal each year. Adani’s Carmichael mine could produce up to 60 million.
Image Library/FlickrJuly 29, 2014

The Carmichael coal project, approved this week by environment minister Greg Hunt, is unprecedented in its scale, and also represents a significant shift in Australia’s coal industry. If the mine goes…

The Alpha Coal Project in Queensland’s Galilee coal basin. The Carmichael project is the second to be approved in the region.
Lock the Gate AllianceJuly 29, 2014

From coal seam gas to wind farms, new resource projects seem to be pitting communities against corporations, and people against their neighbours. We often see, in such cases, community concerns labelled…

Aburizal Bakrie and Nathaniel Rothschild have been engaged in a protracted battle for control over Indonesian mining giant Bumi plc.
Flickr\I am RudyFebruary 28, 2013

Last week saw a shareholders’ meeting of the mining company Bumi plc in London. Shareholders meetings are hardly unusual events. But this was no ordinary shareholders meeting. It involved a major Indonesian…